Saturday, February 24, 2007
ok i think this post is not gonna do justice to how much i've been thinking about this all week coz of the horrible headache i've been having all day. but i know if i don't attempt to put it down now, i won't till tues or wed or later and the thought(s) would have gone stale by then and i'd probably not wanna do write about it by then.ok so anyway, i've been thinking a lot about expectations. they're powerful, subtle, often unspoken, changing, and not always fair. i realized that left unchecked or unexamined, they can get you feeling really disgruntled or angry or disappointed or unsatisfied with things. it's scary how expectations are so easily formed and worse yet, how you often don't even know that they've formed and actually exist till they don't get fulfilled and you're left feeling foul or some variation of that. so i decided to make it a conscious effort to check with myself when i get upset why i've gotten upset. and i realized it's coz things didn't go as i'd expected them to, or people didn't do or say things as i'd expected them to. but what i also realized was that they probably didn't even know what my expectations were or that i even had certain expectations of them. in fact, i didn't even quite know that myself. at least they weren't at the forefront of my conscious mind. but don't we still expect people to know these things since they're so obvious? what an interesting expectation there in itself! or assumption. but expectations are essentially assumptions if they're not communicated rite?so essentially, i guess if i hold expectations without communicating them, it's not fair for those who i have expectations of. but it's so hard articulating them sometimes. so i guess i've chosen not to have them, or at least to stop having them if i become aware of them and i don't want to articulate them. it sure seems like an easier way out. i'm beginning to finally understand farand's wise words way back then when we were so much younger (hmmm he really must have been quite wise!) when he said "expectations screw things up coz you almost never live up to them and people bring such different expectations to the table. there's no such thing as bringing in no expecations." perhaps naive or stubborn me just wants to carry on believing that i can not impose expecations. i mean if i don't have the guts to articulate them, i can't expect people to live up to them right? but in general though, i think i'm quite easily pleased or suprised coz i usually just have very low or no or negative expectations of how the unexpected will turn out. so i usually walk away from something thinking "wow, that wasn't so bad after all" or "hey, that actually was pretty good." guess it's lots easier when the benchmark is set much lower.
i think that in so many circumstances, by default, i've always expected the worse that it's hard to be disappointed. yikes, doesn't that sound like a defense mechanism for you right there? but that's a different topic altogether.oh, and i guess as obvious as this sounds, expectations are formed selectively. reciprocity isn't always expected in r/ships. for instance, with my cg, i really don't expect to receive what i give. (ok, at least not to me, but i do expect to give back to others and serve others.) perhaps that's why whenever they ask how i am or how they can pray for me or when my boys surprise me and actually live up to my often spoken expecations of them being gentlemanly, it always always gets to me and they have no idea how easily they make my day or make me smile and thank God for how wonderful they are. hahaso expectations are really strange. they're probably much more pervasive and powerful in your life than you know it. so go ahead, write down 3 expectations you have of the 5 closest people in your life. the chances are, you probably get peeved with them most easily too. and it might just be because they're not living up to your unspoken expectations. even more interestingly, go write down the top 3 expectations of yourself. maybe you feel crappy about yourself coz of your ridiculously high expectations of yourself.right...so all this stuff has been swimming around in my head. wish my thoughtflow was tighter but at least i've gotten most of it out. and now, the bed is definitely beckoning.
